


Sing Me to Sleep

by charloeing (shipatfirstsight)



Category: The Winner's Trilogy - Marie Rutkoski
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence, Post-Winner's Crime, Spoilers for Winner's Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3517004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/charloeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Arin learns where Kestrel is, he can't stop himself from saving her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> So I finished "The Winner's Crime" and needed to write something for my own pleasure.

Arin didn’t stop to think. 

“They took Kestrel to the work camps,” the man said, panting, pressing a moth into his hand. “She told me to give you this.”

Arin couldn’t afford to stop to think. He had been right about her motivations…but it had been a huge lie—one that might cost her herself. He had to get her out. 

The trek was long and hard—what excuse did he have for going where he was?—and he didn’t have time to form a plan. Of course, when he was there, could see the mine openings, workers—slaves, he corrected, because how was thing any better then he’d been treated?—pouring in and out constantly, he realized that he couldn’t just storm in and sweep her out. In his panic and desperation, he had thought that he could. But that wasn’t what was going to save her. 

So he did what he did best. He lied. 

He stole used clothes and snuck into one of the sleep barracks and posed as one of the workers. He made friendships. He tried not to interfere with the goings on in the camp; he couldn’t save Kestrel if he was dead because he wasn’t smart enough to hold his tongue around the guards. Then he asked questions.

“My wife,” Arin called her because it seemed like the best cover, “she was taken her a few months ago. I just want to know if she’s alive.” 

The others understood. They were all too willing to help. One of the men asked around for him, going on the limited description Arin gave. The man more than proved his worth—not only did he find out that she is alive, he found out where she was living, what cave she worked in. 

Arin just had to figure out when he could use this information. But he’s impatient—he couldn’t sit around and work and wait. She’s wasn’t used to this. He shuddered to think what might be happening to her (another part of him, one he doesn’t want to dwell on right then, feels that she deserves to be here). He got himself assigned to bring the food into the shafts. 

It felt like forever but finally he saw the back of her head. He was half ashamed that he would recognize her form anywhere, but that’s diluted by the relief he feels. He had to stop himself from calling out her name, because all he wanted was for her to turn around, to look at him and for once be honest with how she felt. But he managed to hold it together, handing out the meals one by one until he got to her. 

Arin placed a hand on her shoulder, gently. 

“Get your hand off of me,” is the immediate reply, cool and sharp, and he almost laughed with the relief of knowing that she was still herself. They hadn’t broken her.

“Kestrel,” he said instead of removing his hand.

She gasped, one of her hands shooting up to her mouth even as she turned her head further away from him. “Arin?” 

“I’m here to get you out,” he said, in answer to her unspoken question. He heard what sounded like a sob, and he looked around to make sure no one noticed the extended conversation they were having. Once he gathered that they were going unnoticed, he turned his gaze back to her. Why won’t she look at me? He remembered bitterly the fear on her face when she beheld his new scar, and wondered if she simply refused to look at him because of that. “Kestrel?” He asked, as he moved his hand around her body, gripping her other arm to turn her to face him.

Her hands rose to cover her face, but it was too late. He had already seen. This time it was he who drew back in horror of what he was seeing. But he understood then; he wasn’t horrified at how she looked, he was horrified because someone had done this to her.

She was thinner than he had remembered; her cheeks were hollow, and her collarbone was more pronounced than it had ever been. Long gauges slashed her cheeks. An ‘x’ was carved below the corner of her lip; her lips were dry and cracking besides. There were bruises—they covered her arms and neck. But—perhaps worst of all—was the eye that stared blankly, a milky sheen over it, and the fingers that tried to cover the blind eye that were so clearly broken. 

He wanted to cry for her. He wanted to kill every person that had done her harm. Arin gathered her up in his arms instead, pressing her body against his. Again, he acted without thinking, steering her under the cart. At least, he thought, I though that far ahead. He pushed her up, to freedom.

Escaping is harder than getting in. He does it, though, somehow. He gets them both out. 

She’s not the same. He’d been a fool to think that she might be. He finds his people, most of them alive. They made plans against the emperor; they make alliances with the empire’s enemies. 

But Kestrel didn’t seem to notice. She noticed very little in those days. Arin made sure there was a wagon she could ride in—he was afraid she would fall off a horse. All she did was sit and rock, staring at her still healing hands. 

The nightmares were the worst. She’d scream and cry and thrash in her sleep for hours; there was no waking her up when that happened. All he could do was clutch her body to his, and try to comfort her. 

She wouldn’t talk. She barely ate or drank. The beautiful girl he loved was slipping from him, day by day. He knew he was watching her slowly die.

He had never felt so helpless. 

“Kestrel,” he said to her one night when she sat holding her plate of food without eating it in their tent. “Please. Please eat. I can’t---don’t make me lose you too.”

She didn’t say anything, but she flinched. 

“Sing me to sleep,” she pled that night.

He didn’t need her to beg him; it was enough for her to ask. He does it, singing an old lullaby that he remembers his mother singing to him. 

She ate every meal after that, and she ate as much food as Arin put on her plate. He sang her to sleep every night. 

“Fix my fingers,” she says one night, weeks later. 

“What?” he asked so startled to hear her voice after so many weeks without a word from her that he can’t remember what she actually said.

“I need you to break my fingers back into place. I won’t be able to use them again if you don’t.” 

He didn’t want to at first, “I don’t want to hurt you,” but finally he consents. With her calm directions, he set her fingers, and she didn’t make a sound. When he looked up, though, both of her eyes were squeezed shut. He pulled her to him. “Kestrel, Kestrel, my brave Kestrel,” he murmured, stroking her hair. 

She relaxed against him, clutching his shirt. “Sorry,” she finally whispered. 

“For what,” he asked, kissing the new scars on her face.

“Everything,” she replied.

She told him many of her secrets that night. He clutched her tighter to him, afraid to let her go, afraid of what she might do if she thought his life was in danger.

He woke up to her lips on his scar. “I thought it was beautiful the first time I saw it,” she confessed. 

Arin kissed her firmly on the lips for her honesty. It became a kind of game between them. For every truth the other shared, they got a kiss.

Finally one night, they both murmur between kisses, “I love you.”


End file.
